


Highest Aspiration

by lanyon



Category: Kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Silas is named king, by a flurry of butterflies and by an avalanche of applause, Thomasina is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Highest Aspiration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fabrisse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/gifts).



Thomasina is born in the countryside. Her parents always wanted a boy, to name after her mother’s grandfather. He was a farmer, turned soldier, and he’d fought in one of the maelstrom-wars between Gilboa and Carmel, long before the kingdom was unified.

“He was a hero,” her mother tells her. 

“I will be a hero too,” says Thomasina, and her mother ruffles her hair and laughs. 

She is given dolls to play with because her parents think that that’s what little girls want. They watch her play, quietly in the corner of the living room, away from the mayhem of the workers coming and going, far from the long, wooden kitchen table, and they smile at her. (They do not know that, at seven, she is enacting policies that will change the future of her kingdom, where there is a good king, who loves his family. A good king who does not care that his longed-for son is a daughter.)

.

Thomasina is the first of her family to go to university. She has cousins who run farms, and local stores and who teach at the local primary school, and she knows she is not as good as they are. She is not as smart; they all know what they want and what they want to be. 

.

There is a man in her modern policies class. He is a little older than her, having served at the Selah front. There is a scar on the inside of his right forearm, long and twisted, from wrist to elbow crease. It stands out white against his tanned skin. He is whip-smart and his smile is sudden and blinding. 

His name is Frederick and he is a farmer, turned soldier, turned university student. His tan ends at the collar of his shirt and at the line of his sleeves. His chest, gnarled with scars from an IED that exploded in the transport ahead of his, is stark white, and virtually hairless. 

Thomasina is in love. It is heady and distracting. She should - she could - fail out of every class but he is as motivated as she is. They study together and they reward each other for studying together. She beats him in virtually every test and every essay and he laughs and says that it serves him right for falling for an intelligent woman. He tells her that he’ll keep house and bring up the children and he will be her kept man, once he has seen out his time in the army. 

When they graduate, he returns to the front. Carmel has bought Goliath tanks from Gath. She reads about it in the newspapers and in the stark telegram of condolence that arrives two days after Frederick dies. 

.

She has read about Silas Benjamin before she ever meets him. He is a hero but not like her grandfather, she decides. Her grandfather was shot in the eye during an ill-fated push against Carmel troops. He died protecting the town, Thomasina’s grandmother had told her. Frederick died in a sudden ambush though how they didn’t see the tanks coming is beyond Thomasina. (But he had always said that she was the smart one.)

Silas hasn’t died, though. He’s feisty and he’s determined and he’s as handsome as all get out. Thomasina stops to look at the bank of televisions in the window of an electronics shop. Each screen is emblazoned with a photograph of Silas, this leader of the rebellion, of the unification. _The old kings will be dead,_ she thinks, with a thrill. _Long live the king._

Thomasina hasn’t died, either. She teaches at the local university and she shifts the weight of her school books in her arms; textbooks about political theory and military history that seem so irrelevant while the world changes in front of her eyes. Silas is wanted, dead or alive, in Carmel and in Selah, according to the news reports. Thomasina knows better, though. She knows that the people of these lands, who are honest and brave, want peace. They want a leader to guide them and to shepherd them. 

The news stations interview the king, and the generals, and Thomasina can only see the whites of their eyes. These are the expressions of terror. A good man is coming and there’s nothing so horrifying to men who are less than good. 

Silas Benjamin is coming, like the winds of a hurricane, like the beating of a butterfly’s wings.

.

“What need have I for a personal assistant?” Silas virtually spits out the words. He is polite and he is vicious. His eyes glitter like burning coal, more than diamonds. Linus Abner’s smile is more a smirk but Reverend Samuels looks thoughtful.

“What is your name?” he asks and Silas is silent, the wind taken out of his sails with a single exhale. He listens to the Reverend. This is good, Thomasina thinks. Great men, adventurers and would-be kings need the guidance of God. 

“Thomasina,” she says. 

“For Doubting Thomas?” asks Silas quickly. “Or maybe some other Judas.”

“I have never doubted you, General Benjamin,” she replies, as promptly. “And neither will I betray you, but any man who will be king needs someone to keep his affairs in order.”

“Have you not heard?” asks another man, with a sly smile. “Our future monarch is married.”

“A Rose by any other name, Mister Cross,” says Thomasina. “And two beautiful children, by all accounts.”

“She reads the gossip magazines,” says Cross. “And this is her great qualification, no doubt.”

“I studied political science at the University of Gibeah,” says Thomasina. “I graduated _summa cum laude_. Perhaps Mister Cross might like to read my recently submitted thesis on Vesper Abbadon, Silas Benjamin and political heroism.” She turns to Silas. “Sir, a wife is well and good - and I understand that Miss Cross is both of these - but I am offering you what a wife cannot.” 

Silas’ eyebrows rise. “Miss-”

“Loyalty,” says Reverend Samuels. “She offers loyalty, Silas.”

(Not even wives, or blessed, first-born children, can offer these.)

.

When Silas is named king, by a flurry of butterflies and by an avalanche of applause, Thomasina is there. She stands at the back, to the side, and sees King Silas and Queen Rose wave at their subjects. She listens as King Silas speaks of his vision for Shiloh, a city worthy of this royal state. She watches as their children look out at the crowds, with wide eyes. The Princess Michelle clings to her father’s legs and she is hoisted high, onto his shoulders, and the crowd scream their love. Prince Jack stays behind his mother’s skirts. 

.

“Tell me, Thomasina,” says Silas, a week after his crowning. The Palace is in upheaval and the royal portrait artist has just departed. “What do you think of marriage?”

“Like an olive, sir,” she replies. “Some love it, some hate it and some believe that, if you have enough of it, you will grow to like it.”

“Do you think I married for love?”

“I think that you love,” she says, carefully. He cooks for his family every morning, all the butter that Jack wants and, even though Michelle is too big to be carried about on his hip for long, she is his pride and joy. Yes, this is love. 

“And you, Thomasina. Will you marry?”

“I have no wish to marry but if my King commands it.” 

If her King commands it, she will marry and it may not be love but she can pretend. She can lock away her feelings on the matter, and squash them down, and pretend that they never took form. 

“No,” says Silas, resolutely. “I have need of you here, by my side. Any man who wishes to marry my Thomasina will have to prove himself.”

(She wonders what he would have made of Frederick but, if Frederick was alive today, Thomasina would never have pursued the service of King Silas.)

.

It is not that Thomasina does not believe in love, or that she is not capable of it (she does and she is, most ardently) but she has closed it away, in burnished wood, where it is safe and where no one suspects. 

When she kisses Klotz, the world is heaving itself towards misery and shadow because of a little boy who is their savior but who must drag them through the darkness first. Klotz is a good man (one of the few left in Gilboa, and Gath, and perhaps the world). 

.

The kingdom teeters on the brink. Mistrust and catastrophic errors abound. Thomasina’s loyalty is not unwavering but it was promised, a long time ago. 

Jack, who was such a sweet boy, is cloistered away, walled up like a nun. He was not the son his father wanted and now he has become even more twisted. Thomasina does not care that Jack sleeps with boys but she cares deeply that he embraced betrayal. 

Michelle is distant and in love with a man (who is, perhaps, the son Jack’s father wanted).

Thomasina locks the door and holds her breath and does not listen to Jack’s anguish or his young bride’s confusion. It is the innocent who suffer. It is Jack and it is Lucinda and it is Michelle. 

David is no innocent and neither is Thomasina. She leans against the door, for a brief moment. Silas thinks that his redemption lies between his son’s legs, within his daughter-in-law’s womb. Thomasina’s loyalty is not unwavering and she is not a fool. This family's care has long been her reason and that will not change, even as the winds change.

David Shepherd is coming, like the winds of a hurricane, like the beating of a butterfly’s wings.

**Author's Note:**

> * Happy Yuletide to Fabrisse! I do hope you have enjoyed this.  
> 
> * Thomasina is such a fascinating, stalwart, _loyal_ character that it seems such a shame that we never saw her backstory. A line that stuck with me, though, came in her words to Jack: _It's not so hard; just close your eyes, and dream of someone who's dead._  
> 
> * Many thanks to my dear M and S for casting their eyes over this.


End file.
